Brown Siblings - 01 Laid Bare (10 page)

Big brown eyes flecked with amber were the only things she thought of before drifting off.

9

Todd grinned when she pulled her Outback into his driveway. He wasn’t surprised by her choice of vehicle, or that it had purple metallic paint. He ambled out to meet her, pleased to see she’d pulled her hair into twin braids and wore faded, low-slung jeans with a thin, snug vintage T-shirt.

“This is a great neighborhood,” she said as she got out.

“I like it. I like you in it.” He swept her into a hug, burying his face in her neck.

She laughed, wrapping herself around him. “Hi there.”

“Come inside.” He took her hand and she followed him, looking around.

“Decent front yard. You should plant some flowers and stuff to add color.”

“That’s on the list. Wanna help?”

One of her eyebrows rose and he saw the small scar. “Hey, what happened to the ring?” She touched the spot. “It closed up and I didn’t bother to get it done again.” Her shrug wasn’t defensive, but it seemed closed somehow, and he thought, not for the first time, that the flighty, carefree Erin had been edged away, smile lines replaced with those resulting from enduring emotional pain.

He led her inside and she turned in a circle. “Pretty! I love these big front windows.” He joined her, standing very close, and she leaned back into him. He had to close his eyes at how good it felt.

“It’s nice that the trees and the shape of the lot actually give you some great privacy.” His hands slid down her belly and up under her shirt. “No bra. You’re playing with fire,” he said as he nipped her shoulder.

“Yeah? As a former cop you’re close enough to a firefighter, right? Show me.” He spun her so she faced the wall. “Hands on the wall.” She obeyed immediately, canting her ass back at him. One-handed, he unbuckled his belt and opened his pants, freeing his cock. He leaned over her, caging her there with his body. One hand played with her nipple, pulling it, playing with the ring while the other hand headed down into her jeans and panties.

He groaned when he found her hot and slick. “Ready for me.” That she was so responsive to him drove him crazy. His teeth gripped the back of her neck and she bucked back against him with a feral-sounding cry. Her honey rained on his hand, easing his way as he pressed two fingers up into her gate while his thumb stroked over her clit.

He fingered her slippery cunt until she breathed out one long exhale and came. He could have lied to himself and pretended he hadn’t remembered how quickly she came, how often and seemingly effortlessly—but it was unnecessary. He was simply relieved she still came for him so easily.

Within moments he’d sheathed himself and she’d helped him shove her jeans down and off one leg. He nudged against her ankle, urging her legs apart.

“This is the best assumed position I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing,” he grunted just as he found her gate and thrust up and into her in one hard flex of his hips.

She hissed, and he saw her fingers curl into the wall. He’d ached for her for the last week, not getting enough from their phone calls and e-mails. He’d fucked his fist over and over and it had not been enough. Right at that moment he had to have her. Right then. It wasn’t the time for long, slow lovemaking.

She thrust her ass back, taking him deeper.

“Yes, baby, that’s it. Give me your pussy.”

He held her hips tight, keeping her forward and where he wanted her. His fingers dug into her skin. He knew he’d mark her and it only made him harder.

She kept making small, needy noises in the back of her throat, urging him on. He let those noises guide him as he fucked into her with short, hard digs.

He let it all go, let the walls he’d built around himself fall away. Their first time had been raunchy enough, but this was hard. Hard and rough and at his whim.

She moved one hand down and began to play with her clit as he fucked her. Christ, this woman was a fucking goddess.

“Mmm. Make yourself come again,” he said into her ear right before he bit it. He knew she liked it when her cunt rippled around him.

Harder and harder, he continued to thrust until he let his head fall back. So close. It barreled up from his heels as he came so hard he saw spots. Her muted cry and the way her honey coated his cock, sliding down to his balls, told him she’d come too.

A few more thrusts and he finally pulled out slowly, holding the condom in place. He pressed a

kiss to her neck. “I’ll be right back. You can get dressed again.” At the end of the hall he called out, “For now.” And heard her laugh.

That was fucking hot
. Her right hip was a bit tender and she knew there’d be a bruise or two there. In truth she loved to be marked that way. It had scared Jeremy to mark her at all, no matter how much she’d told him not only was it okay, but that she liked it.

That Todd, so powerful and strong, had just fucked her, used her the way he wanted but hadn’t actually harmed her, showed her just how much control he had. She hoped he didn’t feel like he’d lost control when really he’d shown incredible restraint.

She looked around the front room they’d been in. Things were arranged in a feminine way, but not in the way a woman does when she’s a lover. Not in the way of a woman who has marked a space she was a regular part of. No, this spoke of mother or sister. She knew he had both, or he did before anyway.

A knot of tension loosened at that realization and then agitation rolled through her. She shouldn’t care one way or the other. Only that she wasn’t
the other woman
.

“There you are.” He came back into the room and moved directly to her. She liked that he sought her out, liked the way he kissed the back of her neck.

“Like I’d run away? You promised Thai food and beer. Can’t run out on that. Now is this the room you wanted to paint? If so, dude, you haven’t even moved the furniture. And, not to be nitpicky or anything, but um, shouldn’t you have more than this?” He dragged her down a hall into another room. This one had drop cloths down, and painter’s tape had been put around the windows and at the ceiling.

“This is the room. I used to have more furniture, but the divorce, you know.” He shrugged.

“She’d bought most of it anyway. I let her have it. I need to start over, I suppose.”

“Ah. I understand.” And she did. She’d come back to Seattle with very little that had decorated the home in LA she’d shared with Jeremy and Adele. “Sometimes you just need to make a clean break.”

He bent, prying open a can of paint, pouring it into a pan. The back of his T-shirt rode up, showing a work-hard, sun-kissed swath of skin. A shiver went through her at the sight, like a secret between them.

When he turned, she’d put a bandana over her hair. She took the roller brush he handed her way.

The windows were open and she heard birds chirping, children playing, lawn implements buzzing and whirring. Normal, everyday life went on, comforting her and making her feel inadequate all at once.

“You know about clean breaks?” he asked before taking his own roller brush up and putting it through the paint.

She followed suit, the wet-swish sounds of the brushes distributing paint on the walls a surprisingly warm combination between orange and yellow.

It wasn’t like she’d never told anyone what happened. But the telling was like pulling an organ out, ripping it from her flesh and nearly dying from the pain.

“Yes,” she murmured as she worked.

“You had someone in LA?”

“Yes.”

He waited awhile, as they painted. After a time he began to speak.

“When I met Sheila, she was everything I wanted in a woman.” He paused. “Everything I
thought
I wanted. Soft. Feminine. She went to church on Sundays. We had dinner with her family every other weekend. She was—
is
beautiful in that “magazine spread for
Family Circle
” sort of way. Perfect. Blonde, big pale-blue eyes. Her voice is so soft and sweet.” Erin knew he had a point to make, but whatever it was, the lead up was making her want to run this Sheila bitch over with her car a few times. And kick him in the junk for telling her all this.

“Anyway, I thought once I married her, I’d feel better. I’d be doing what I was supposed to. I’d have this pretty wife, I’d be a cop, have a career, a house in the suburbs, kids in a few years maybe. I should have been happy. But I wasn’t. I came home every night to a perfect house.

Dinner on the table. She was good to me, Erin, but I did not hold up my end of the bargain. After a while she sort of gave up. I can’t blame her. She wanted kids and I put her off. I think she was considering leaving me long before the shooting. Anyway, I guess sometimes what we think we want isn’t what we need, and until we admit it, we’re fucking lying to ourselves.” She sighed. “I haven’t painted a wall in many years. I’m going to be sorry tomorrow.” She paused and looked at him sideways. He raised a brow and she admitted defeat. “Fine. I had a lot of things I’d dreamed of. I
was
ridiculously happy, I can’t lie to you. But something so singularly horrible happened to me that it broke me. It turned me inside out and I will never be the same.

Jeremy had a different way to process what happened. Our romantic relationship didn’t make it through. He’s still my friend, you should know that. He’ll always be a part of my life if for no other reason than that he’s Adrian’s manager. Anyway, sometimes things happen. Things you dream of as your worst nightmare but you simply can’t imagine the horror until you’re living them. And you’re so bent, so broken and changed that you have to walk away or you’d . . . die.” She blinked the tears back as she painted, letting the rhythm of the work soothe her.

“Jesus God. What happened to you, Erin?”

“I lost someone. I can’t . . . I really just can’t talk about it right now. Are your parents happy you’re back home?”

Todd’s hands trembled as he pushed the roller up and down the wall. Her voice, her demeanor—

she’d changed and he wanted to comfort her, but he didn’t know how and it was clear she wasn’t ready to reveal more at this stage in their relationship. Whatever it was, it had stolen the joy from her eyes, taken the edge of free- spiritedness from her and put lines around her mouth.

“They are. My mom has been making noises about meeting you, by the way.” He wanted to make it clear to her that he’d been talking about her to his family. Before he’d done the wrong thing, but now he’d rectify that. Now he would put her where she belonged.

“Tell me about your business.” She bent and rolled the brush through the paint before setting back to work again.

He allowed her the space to steer away from the other topic. “Ben and Cope started it four years ago. Both did bodyguard work on the side and finally figured out security consulting was a good idea up here. Loads of rich people who need help with not just personal security like bodyguards, but home security as well. We do office and home security systems and consultations like safety plans when our clients travel. We hook people up with safety training like martial arts and self-defense courses as well as providing bodyguards and security forces. Essentially whatever the client needs.”

“And what do you think? Do you like the work so far?”

“I like it a hell of a lot more than being out on the streets in a squad car every day. I like helping people take charge of their own safety. Speaking of that, do
you
have a safety plan? I’m not asking as BCT Security Solutions but as Todd to Erin. It’s clear something horrible happened. I want to be sure you’re safe.”

She smiled at him as she stretched to get the top of the wall painted. “Yes. The label hooked me up when I came back to Seattle. My condo has state-of-the-art security and the building is very secure too. They offered me a bodyguard but I don’t want that. I just want to write music, to make coffee and to be left the fuck alone.” She turned to face him. “But it means a lot that you’d ask. Really. Thanks.”

They painted in amiable company for another two hours, until a ruckus at the back door made him groan.

“That’ll be Ben. You may as well meet him now or he’ll just keep on. He’s that way. I wouldn’t have even told him you’d be here today, but he wanted to go golfing and I told him why I had much better plans.”

She looked startled for a moment and then softened. He liked that. Liked when he could tell he’d touched her in some small way. But they couldn’t discuss it, because in moments Ben’s boots sounded as Todd’s best friend shouted out a greeting.

“Hot damn, it
is
Erin Brown. I was wondering if Todd had made you up to keep his mother from fixing him up with the single daughters of her church ladies.” Ben, well over six and a half feet of burly, used to play football in high school, grinned as he burst into the room.
Holy hotness,
Batman.
This hunk of homegrown Northwest man gave Todd a serious run for his money in the mouthwa tering department.

Erin blinked a few times, blushing. “You’d be Ben, the ‘B’ in BCT Security Solutions, then.” She wiped her hands and held one out for him to take. She wasn’t small by any means, but Ben dwarfed her anyway.

“Hands off now. Why are you here?” Todd put the lid back on the paint after he’d poured the remainder back into the can.